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Hello everyone, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Beth, and I've known myself to be an atheist for about 10 years now. At first I approached it the same way I had approached my (seeming)…Continue

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"On a related note, if everything is "set" salvation-wise, what reason is there to be 'good' now? Folks going to Heaven have a place reserved due to past goodness, and folks going to Hell might as well live it up since…"

"In late December 2002, my sister asked me to attend a church revival with her. My belief status was neutral at the time. Things were going fine until the pastor said, "2002 was the year for you; 2003 is the year for me". …"

"The leg shaving social convention led to one of my most-regretted "logical" decisions of all time. Around 5th grade, I thought: Leg-hair is bad; legs are extremities just like arms; people see my arms more than my legs;…"

"I came late to the discussion, and admit I haven't read all 45 pages of comments. But my thoughts on your question are best summed up by this quote attributed to Marcus Aurelius:
‘Live a good life. If there are gods and they are…"

"I think redirecting folk is too invasive, but I like the idea of a framed page w/the verse and the page they requested.
I admit I know little about such hotspots. It would be something you owned, right? If so, if people get…"

"I am so sorry for your friend's loss.
Dealing with this must have an extra dimension of difficulty for him, since he is a pastor. I think it's not uncommon for folk in his situation to question god, and be angry (as well they…"

"I guess I was interpreting omniscience as knowing everything that is, not everything that may be. I looked up the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it wasn't too enlightening - "Knowing everything" - but I can see…"

"Couldn't the argument then turn to "free will"? That is, the argument that God is omniscient in the sense that he knows everything that can be known, but the acts of a human with free will can't be known until tested. …"

"That does seem hard to bear - moreso living with people who are so against who you are then the Christmas Eve sermon. The sermon seems a symptom of the larger problem - they don't accept you as an adult whose choices must be…"

Hello Beth! We are getting together on the 12th at a local coffee shop. I am in the process of getting our own website up, and I will let you know when that happens. Please send me a private message if you are interested in attending, we would love to have you. I will give you all of the details there. : )

Well, now you know some people who *do* "own up to not believing." More than that: I think other people shouldn't believe, either. (But there are two senses of "should" at work there. (i) I think that people shouldn't believe in a thing's existence with anything approaching a high degree of confidence without good reason; (ii) I think that people shouldn't believe that there is good reason to think that God really does exist. Someone who disagrees with me on (ii) should believe, in the sense of (i)--the debate then is over how good the reasons are for and against such belief.) I am, in fact, writing a collection of philosophical essays to that effect. So, you most certainly are now acquainted with people who do not believe in God and who are willing to speak up about it!

Yeah I've done a lot of reading on atheism and science all to keep the leetle grey cells working, y'know? ;^)

My local book shop now sells coffee and muffins and no books and has been renamed Starbucks and thus did the common society get just a smidgen worse. But there is hope. Behold the power of Amazon home delivery....

I read TGD, some way into my thinking my way into atheism. What, if I may ask did it do for you? Are you looking to read more books about it?

For me it was like having a friend agree with me in a contentious argument. I'd sussed the Ontological argument and the Argument from Design were bunk and I was busy reading up on real science - and think a-ha , at last: ANSWERS! - then TGD came out and it was like, ah I'm not wrong to be thinking this. Excellent.

So in a sense it crystallised my unbelief from a solution I'd been stirring for a few years prior.